On Mon, 23 Jul 2007, Andrew Morton wrote: > On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 14:43:23 -0700 > Christoph Lameter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > __GFP_ZERO is implemented by the slab allocators (the page allocator > > has no knowledge about the length of the object to be zeroed). The slab > > allocators do not pass __GFP_ZERO to the page allocator. > > OK, well that was weird. So > > kmalloc(42, GFP_KERNEL|__GFP_ZERO); > > duplicates > > kzalloc(42, GFP_KERNEL);
Correct. > Why do it both ways? There are now ~2.5k uses of kzalloc in the kernel. kzalloc and friends implies that we need to duplicate all allocator functions. That was never done for NUMA allocators there was never a kzalloc_node f.e.. kzalloc also cannot be used in a parameterized way in a derived allocator where you would simply pass on the gfp flags. __GFP_ZERO support allows all allocators to work in a consistent way. There is no need to special case slab zeroing allocation. kzalloc could be removed. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
